If

If you are not
Driven, you cannot
Be saved.
In the school yard,
Swinging hips like
Deadly grenades and
Lingering eyes of our
Other company, men,
They’ll suck you right
In,
Never daring to
Release you.

My family scolds me for
The lack of A’s,
I laugh to hide my
Unwavering pain and disinterest
For education,
My mind fingers the ideal of
An early marriage to a
Middle-class man with a
Shiny heel and a heart of gold mint,
I say,
O’
I say,
I shall bear you four
Darling angels with maniacal
Throats and heads clouded in
Depressive smoke,
I want to believe it.
I want to see it.

For that theory,
I detest myself.
When the pretty boy
From his corner saunters forward
I lean back and sigh.
This is it, my future.
But I don’t give him
My time, eye, or number,
I fancy myself and others claiming
There is another.
Yet he is not present.

My worst-case scenario
Would be to live a lie,
I can count the amount of
Tulip beds I planted with the
Children and my mother,
Our urban assault vehicle purring
Sweet carbon monoxide fumes
In the drive,
The American pride starched like my
Husband’s white collars branded
On the two story colonial.
My babies grown to my youth,
Sweet sixteen and smoking
Pot at her boyfriend’s.
I would witness her graduation,
Her departure from a close-knit
Haven to the world:
She’d leave me and wouldn’t come back.
I won’t blame her for that.

If I am not driven,
I will see myself here.
The aging housewife and her
Botox desires,
So I pray to someone,
To my God,
To my superiors,
Give me motivation or a
Power I can scourer for.
Though my heart would much
Prefer to settle for the suburban life,
I would rather see it to the end of my being.
Because Hell,
Hell is in-between the papier-mâché walls
And marble glided counter-tops,
The babies screaming as little Demons,
My neighbors prodding the flowers
With fake plastered smiles,
The husband gone for long hours
Beside an anorexic working girl,
And I
Longing for the universe,
My hand rests upon my heart and my broom.